78% of Indians say insurance is key to overall financial planning: Survey – Mint

A survey conducted by SBI Life Insurance in tie-up with NielsenIQ (India) has revealed that in the post-covid era, 78% of Indians feel that life insurance is extremely important in the overall financial planning process.

The survey further revealed that realizing this importance, 46% of the respondents purchased health insurance and 44% purchased life insurance for the first time during covid-19.

“Although Indians feel insurance is important, they still seem to be underinsured with as their insurance cover is almost 3.8 times of their annual income which is not even close to recommended 10 times or 25 times of their annual income,” SBI Life Insurance said in a report.

These findings are a part of the Financial Immunity Survey 2.0, which was conducted among 5,000 respondents across 28 cities across India. The study provided insights into consumer behaviour towards financial preparedness in the post-covid world.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic, a vast majority of Indians are confident that the country would tide over the situation or a possible third wave.

As per the insurer, the confidence of being able to navigate through the situation is not surprising when 80% of the Indians strongly feel prepared towards physical immunity on account of taking either a single or double dose of vaccination.

“But 38% of the Indians feel that the situation could worsen over the next three months and their top three worries attributed to (1) Rising medical/ treatment cost (2) Instability of Jobs (3) concerns around Health of family/self,” the insurer said.

The survey findings further attempted to decode the behaviour towards the top worries cited by consumers on the account of the impact of income because of the pandemic where 79% of the Indians faced income reduction and 1/3rd are still facing reduced income. 64% of the Indians feel that their key life milestones like accumulating savings, leisure travelling, providing for child education were impacted.

With covid-19 and uncertainty around, the importance of financial immunity has increased and 57% of the Indians relate it to being able to maintain ‘Financial Security and Stability of self/ family’.

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